Baptised by the Dutch Rain, Vincent's Tears

I have gotten caught in the Dutch rain twice now.

Yesterday, as I was leaving the Vincent Van Gogh museum, I stopped in what I imagine to be a Dutch bodega. When I climbed the stairs back up to the street level, avocado and croissant in hand, the sky was crying harder and louder than I had cried waiting at the gate of the SeaTac International Airport.

As I walked in the pouring rain, I began to mull over my private tour of Van Gogh’s life and suicide.

My tour guide, a Dutch art historian, Tien, spoke of Van Gogh in the first person, as though they have known each other for years – I suppose that in a way, they have.

“Vincent,” she said, “was inspired by Japanese art.”

“Vincent,” she told me, “never used yellow unintentionally.”

“Vincent,” she laughed, “never ate his oil paints.”

“Vincent,” she argued “should have never been sent to an asylum.”

Tien was enticing to listen to and even more familiar to talk to -- she said my full name the way my Nana used to – with a hard “t” – “Saman’t ’a.”

She gave me a hug when I began to sob at one of Vincent’s paintings. She told me that in the letter explaining the piece to his brother Theo, that his desire to live was deteriorating. Tien told me to look closely.

“Vincent,” she whispered, “had a hard time connecting with anyone but his canvas.”

She hugged me once more at the end of the meeting and gave me the number for a posthumous psychiatrist who has spent his life trying to understand the suicides of the world’s greats. She also encouraged me to go to France – to Arles where Van Gogh lived with Gauguin and to Auvers-sur-Oise, where he shot himself.

She told me to go alone, with no guide. “Go feel,” she said, “what Vincent felt.”

I think I will. My four-day journey to the South of France will begin at the end of August.

My denim jacket and my wool shoes have proven to have even less wherewithal than I have had. When I put them on early this morning, the shoulders were still damp, and the soles were still squeaking wet with water.

Early this morning (August 1), I walked out my interim accommodation, the Via Hostel in Diemen, Netherlands. I was pleased to see that the sky had cleared from yesterday. After five minutes of six-in-the-morning sunshine, the clouds rolled in, again.

I left my rain jacket in the room. My hair is dripping wet. I have found myself in a white-tiled, black-walled café in Oosterdokskade, Amsterdam. I have a feeling I will spend the majority of my day here, playing chicken with the sky.

My time in this cafe is probably for the best, though. Within only three days of travel, I feel as though I have grown uncomfortably attuned to the reality of a Watson year that is philosophical at its core…

I have a lot of thinking and reading to do.

And, despite the joy, wonders, and benefits that the Socratic method has to offer. I find that my philosophizing is best done alone – just me, doing philosophy.

I am grateful for my professors at the University of Puget Sound, who have given me the tools to question with care and think with caution. Proper philosophy takes time. I am content to think in beautiful places and learn from cultures all around the world.

A few questions I have been entertaining in the past couple of days:

What is the difference between pain and suffering? We so often speak as though these experiences are different. But how?

How do we understand our own and others’ emotional experiences?

I do believe that our emotions offer us an essential epistemic insight into the true nature of the happenings and the reality that surrounds us. They grab us by the shoulders and tell us:

“The reason why you’re so sad is because this meant a lot to you.”

Without emotions, I imagine interfacing with our own lived experience would be practically incomprehensible.

But, what about others’ emotions? In a broken conversation with a stranger yesterday, they pointed out that we are always quantifying our own and others’ emotional experiences, in comparison with ours. This remains true across the American health care system. “Please rate your pain on a scale of 1-10.” Or, suicidality/mental illness assessments: “How difficult has your suicidal ideation made your day-to-day life?

1 = very little interference, 5 = I cannot get out of bed.

Upon further reflection, it is clear that we also do this with our own emotional experience. We consider our anguish, and we radically imagine what ways it could be worse, or, better.

I have a hunch that, proponents for the 2002 Euthanasia Act, are especially good at radically accepting others’ emotional experiences as an unquestionable, unquantifiable, unqualifiable truth.

I plan on asking the many Dutch bioethicists I have been bothering a question that, I believe, will confirm or deny the above hunch: “Is psychiatric euthanasia too accessible in the Netherlands?”

I’ll keep y’all updated on what they say – I have two meetings in Rotterdam next week. And, a few more here. One touching on suicide by train and the other on zelfmoord preventie (suicide prevention, hehe).

The coffee here is lovely. And the people are even better.

Amsterdam Pride is in a few days.

‘Infinite Jest’ is funny. I’m on page 23.

This rain is a baptism.

More soon,

Sam xxx.

“Vincent’s Dreams” was a short exhibition on his mental illness. This piece was created to capture what it feels like to be suicidal. The jagged edges of the mirrors eerily displaces your sense of self and humanity. You look around and you see a distorted self staring back at you. This in consideration with self-portrait offers much to think about.

Vincent cut off his ear and painted it. You can see the Japanese art behind him. So much significance here, especially when we consider that to paint a self-portrait one must look in the mirror.